Monster & Teeny

Ten years ago I would have scoffed at mothers who gave up work to stay at home with their children. Five years ago I considered women who returned to work and used childcare for little more than newborns to be selfish, shallow, unmaternal types. Now I would march to support the rights of either and consider that aslong as the decision makes the people it effects happier than the alternative that is the right choice.

Five years ago I was a firm believer in children needing routine. I am documented in parenting newsgroups as saying so, insisting, Gina Ford stylee that what a few hours old baby really needs is to be taught night from day as early as possible. I felt that boundaries, structure and clear guidelines were the secret of raising young. Now I realise that the person requiring that structure, routine and guidelines was infact me, if I’d have surrendered to the feeding when hungry, sleeping when tired idea then there would have been no dreadful, far reaching effects. Now I feel the continuation of such parenting ‘techniques’ into the naughty step Supernanny style of behaviour control and modification is far from beneficial, natural or likely to have healthy long term effects. I seek and strive (and sometimes stumble and falter) to work with my children, to smooth their path and assist them in dealing with what they find difficult. Rather than relating their issues to me and the effect of my child ’showing me up in the supermarket’ I keep the issue where it belongs - with my child and try to ascertain why they are behaving that way and either remove the irritant or offer them coping mechanisms with things I cannot remove. Which is not to say I would judge these methods when used by others, we all have different levels of unacceptability in the behaviour of those around us and ways in which we will deal with it. It is imperative to the harmony of our household that pen lids are put back on after use, that children’s faces are wiped clean of peanut butter, ears are clear of wax and nails are free of dirt. Total non issues to others. In the same way there will be areas I’d be considered lax and liberal by some on things I simply don’t consider important or worth the effort.

Educationally I would have once chosen to send my children to private school. I then choose Home Education and was utterly confident I would be curriculum led, structured and academic in bias. Our approach actually has become ever more autonomous. As I explained to a friend recently the chief reason for this is that it suits us. The simple dynamic of Monster, Teeny and I on a day by day, week by week basis is best when left alone. Our days do indeed have a pattern and a rhythm but predetermined education is not one of them. I reconsider, listen primarily to my children but also to others around us, modify and alter as we go along. I change my ideas, adapt to lifestyle changes and largely of course make it up as we go along!

If pushed I would have to concede that of course I do believe that autonomous education is best, I also believe that autonomous parenting is best but do not achieve that most of the time. I don’t believe in smacking children, I don’t believe in organised childcare or education. I don’t believe in structure or curriculums, I don’t believe anyone knows better than the individual what they should be learning about - and yes I extend that to my own four and six year old children. If it seems like hard work to them, is irrelevant or uninteresting and they show reluctance to bother with it then I believe they are right. There is not, contrary to popular believe an eleven year window for learning all the stuff we need to know - we are constrained in learning only by our own lifetime - just yesterday as a result of a question from Monster about why spiders don’t get stuck in their own webs I learnt something I had previously gotten to 33 without knowing - at the same time as my 4 year old daughter, 6 year old son and 42 year old husband - anyone care to try and tell me when we *should* have learnt that, cos it strikes me the answer for all four of us was ‘yesterday’. I don’t agree with the concern about not having ‘exposed’ them to everything meaning you will have done them a disservice - who is to determine what needs to be included in that exposure? Have rocket scientists read Shakespeare, have oscar winning actors run marathons, have world leaders pulled a pint?

These topics put people’s backs up, make them defensive, question and challenge their choices and therefore the opposing viewpoints to their own need to be torn apart. I don’t think that everyone who does things differently to us is wrong, if it is making them and their family happy then clearly it is right. What I am constantly annoyed and angered by is the suggestion that we have the choice to make the right decision for ourselves removed from us in favour of what someone else thinks is best for us. 

When I was first thinking about Home Ed Monster was 2 and Teeny was a teeny baby. I bought all the workbooks and cherished the hot housing notion that possibly a lot of us did in the early days of them passing their first GCSE aged 7 and graduating from uni at 12. Monster had been very receptive to things like shapes, colours, identifying animals and lots of those other early learning things during his second year - very much the mark of a baby with no siblings and a mother who sat on the floor with him a lot talking and playing I imagine. Although Teeny who had a tiny percentage of that time spent sat on the floor with her at the same age certainly didn’t seem to get to those goals any slower.

But when we came to letters, reading and writing whilst I wouldn’t say Monster was slow at it he wasn’t really desperately interested either. We have lots of reading scheme books although we’ve never really done anything with them other than have them on the shelves and sometimes look at them if they are the book of choice brought to me by one of the children. I personally loathe Letterland and my quick glance at Jolly Phonics suggested I wouldn’t be too keen on that either. And unless one of the children comes to something I dislike under their own steam and loves it chances are it won’t be something we use . We have 100 easy lessons which I think is quite a good resource, Monster and I did do a few of the lessons when he was about 4 and when he was in an interested and receptive mood I do think the letter sounds and breakdown of how words are formed taught in 100EL is about the best around. I realised when he was about 4.5 that he did indeed know all the letter sounds and their names and by five he knew that to read a word you had to blend the letters together, so any basic phonetic word was readable to him.

He was writing his name at four and could copy most letters quite nicely. Sometime whilst he was five he could write pretty much any letter and at six I just need to tell him which letter for him to write it and if he is in the mood to think about writing he could do so as he is capable of working out which sound is next in a word and writing it. Spelling and punctuation have never been talked about really, but will obviously come with practise as and when he feels the need. He probably considers writing more important than reading at the moment, he does a lot of drawing and making things and often asks me to write on them or to spell words for him so he can. He can read sufficiently to navigate his way round an x box game but enjoys being read to too much to want to pick a book up and read it himself.

There was a time when I was just desperate for him to read. I considered reading the key to autonomy, the answer to critics of HE, the proof we were doing it ‘right’ and the salve to my fretting. Now I listen to him playing, talking, inventing stories and lives for his toys, chatting to his sister, instructing friends in things, asking me endless questions and talking things through with us and know that it is far more important that he is using words and communicating in whatever way he finds easiest then in focusing on sitting quietly and practising reading three letter words and writing endless rows of the same letter. It is articulating himself and understanding others which is the key to reading and writing, if you spend time working on cracking that skill then when the reading and writing is really necessary surely it will come much easier?

Teeny is the product of my far more relaxed attitude. She probably adores books far more than her brother, possibly because I have never made them anything other than a source of enterainment and education for her with some of the clumsier early efforts to get her reading like I tried on Monster. We looked at 100EL about a year ago and she was interested briefly but never remembered the previous lesson when next we came back to it, even the following day. She has very recently started playing a barbie game online which required her to enter her name so I wrote it out for her upper case and she copied it every time, finding the letters on the keyboard. She then lost the piece of paper but carried on typing it without help. Last week I bought some foam letters and she imediately picked out the letters of her name and put them in order, is often spotting the letters from her name in other words and this weekend wrote her name all by herself for the first time in my birthday card, then repeated the trick in the steam on the car window. It would be a crime to do anything to squash the enthusiasm and pride she has in this by giving her anything else to start trying to write as she would likely not manage it on the first attempt and lose all confidence in what she can already do. As her name is eight letters with only one repeated she already can spot seven letters so that’s over a quarter of the alphabet sorted

They are both very aware of the written word, are both pretty articulate children and I am witnessing them start to work out how to use the written word for themselves in their own time as and when it is important for them to do so. 

Tagged by Allie at Green House

Six weird things about me.

THE RULES

each player of this game starts with the ’six weird things about you’ blog post. People who get tagged need to write their own six weird things post and state the rules clearly. At the end of the post tag six more people and don’t forget to leave a comment on their blog to tell them they have been tagged and tell them to read your blog.

1. I cannot bear having chipped nail varnish. I also can’t bear having no nail varnish, I just hate the feel of my nails being naked. I chipped a nail while in labour with Teeny and between contractions snuck out into our hall to retouch my nail polish and was caught by my horrified midwife in the act!
2. When I grow up I want to be the Shake n Vac woman.
3. I don’t watch soap operas, which I think makes me sane really, but has given other people cause to consider me weird
4. When I blow my nose bubbles come from the tear duct in my left eye
5. I felt a little sad when I realised John Barrowman from Torchwood is gay recently. Because of course up until that point I genuinely stood a chance with him
6. I have never read any of the Harry Potter books or seen any of the films. I have no intention of ever doing so.

Tagging:

Merry
Em
Sarah
Alison
Lucy
Ros

We spend most our time in the company of other Home Educating families. Any of our non HE / schooled friends are so used to it being what we do that it’s no longer an issue or topic of conversation. But having recently started a new job I have been doing a walking impression of a HE FAQ this last month and as Monster started a new Badgers this week I primed him a little for the possibility of ‘what school do you go to?’ type questions.

Most of the time I forget we are / do something different, it’s not a massive part of who we are, just one aspect of us. But in much the same way as I forget that I have red hair until a hairdresser comments on it asking if it’s my natural colour or someone talks with tact about fat people in my presence reminding me that I am overweight I forget about these traits and then remember that actually to the casual observer or someone who doesn’t know me well they are probably quite defining. HE is the same - easy to forget you’re doing something very different to the rest of the country when you’re safe in your HE bubble but actually it is very different, very unusual and very worthy of the vast amount of questions I’ve been answering the last month.

The reasons we had for coming to HE in the beginning have long since become obsolete and irrelevant. But, before I even had children I always swore I’d celebrate them as individuals, value them for the people they were and support them in identifying, reaching and achieving their dreams and their potential. That if I gave them nothing else I would ensure they were secure and loved, confident that they were important, worthy and wonderful people. Raising them to be good, confident, capable adults able to recognise and facilitate their needs and desires. Home Education, I believe fulfils all of those criteria for my two children and is the key to those early building blocks in achieving those long terms aims, for us, for now.

However I do recall that as a child the very last thing I ever wanted to be was different. I wanted to blend in, to be like everyone else, to not be marked out. Nowadays I generally take pride in not being one in the crowd, in having an identity, in being an individual. It’s what I encourage most in Monster and Teeny and what I take most pride in seeing them display. But I am aware that even I have my days when I don’t want to be flying the flag for HE, I can’t be bothered with being different, I can see the benefits in anonymity and fitting in. For now HE is our decision, Monster and Teeny are still young enough for us to be making big decisions like that for them, I am 100% confident that in these early years we are doing our very best by them in not sending them to school, we are rescuing them from the tyranny of the standard, the curse of homogenisation, the damage of the classroom and the playground and the trials of the National Curriculum, we are empowering them to learn who they are, what their passions might be, allowing them the freedom to be individuals and discover their potential all within the secure and loving environment of home. Every need is catered for, every whim indulged and it is this which I am doing in the hopes that when they do fly away it will be with confidence and with a clear direction to their path.

For every time I challenge the idea of school in my current FAQ incarnation I state how unlike real life a classroom is, how we never sit in alphabetical order, grouped by birth year, geography and sometimes even gender, handed all we need to know as prescribed for us in a one size fits all manner in one hour bite sized chunks with it clearly marked for which compartment within our brain it should be slotted. How actually school stunts our socialising, limits our choices of relationships and allows no room for individual passions or interests. How it is no preparation for ‘real life’ at all. I also know that actually that whole prescribed daily routine, that head-down-get-on-with-your-work mentality is actually very common place in many workplaces and how work is something you endure rather than enjoy. At school it is for the extrinsic reward of a gold star, an A grade, a piece of paper stating you have a qualification. At work it is for a paycheque, a job title, four weeks annual leave and a pension plan. Actually in many ways school does a perfect job of preparing the workforce of tomorrow. It teaches them to be hungry and thirsty at nice evenly spaced times throughout the day, to find their common ground with the person sat next to them, to work for the praise / financial reward from others and to view work as something to be endured rather than enjoyed and that it does indeed take up nearly half your working hours.

I am very aware that in choosing to Home Educate Monster and Teeny I am marking them out as different. I am aware that already, with Monster only being six it will be something that he will be talking about in adulthood. If he started school tomorrow he would still have ‘missed out’ on nursery, reception and nearly half of year one. It has already shaped him and who he is. I know that the longer we continue with this path, the more it will define them and who they become. It will be one of the first pieces of information that they will impart about themselves in new relationships for years to come. It will come up at job interviews, in the pub, be part of their CV, form all the memories of their childhood, be a massive part of who they are. It will be what defines them for years and will either be the credit or the blame for whatever they choose to do with their lives.

One of the expectations on HE which has always really bothered me is that everyone expects brain surgeons in training to be the result. If a HE child ends up working in McDonalds it would be considered a failure for HE. But let’s not forget that McDonalds is staffed by schooled children and noone is holding them up as the example for schools failing. I truly hope and expect that self motivation, a zest for life and getting the most from every opportunity and a curiosity and quest for learning more will be indicative of my children’s Home Education. I don’t care if they never gain a qualification in their lives, I have no ambitions for them to attend university, be recruited into ‘top jobs’ or exhibit other badges of success. I hope they manage always to retain and be true to who they are. I hope whatever they choose to invest their time and energy in repays them with fulfilment and happiness, I hope they will think of us and know that whether we failed them or not in our choices we always did the very best we were able to manage for them and that all of our decisions were based on what we felt would make them happiest in life. So far I know I am raising free thinkers, potentially radical individuals who will strike out and be heard, who will fight for their rights and who expect and anticipate that nothing is beyond their grasp but they will need to work out how to achieve it. I’m not after burdening their shoulders with my dreams, I want to leave them free for their own.

So what if they want to go to school then? This is a question that I get asked fairly regularly. I am pretty vocal on the plusses of Home Education, the negatives of school and yes, I probably am anti school in many ways. I confess to having been fairly critical of people who have chosen school for their children having tried or considered Home Education and if I were to decide tomorrow to sign Monster and Teeny up for school then I would deserve all that crisicism thrown back at me tenfold. But you know what? When I was a child, although I didn’t love school I wouldn’t have ever wanted to be Home Educated. My favourite books were the Malory Towers series, my favourite TV show was Grange Hill. I fantacised about having a best friend to share secrets and make up with just like in my books and magazines, I was desperate for sleepovers, parties, my first crush, the joy of new stationery and pencil cases every September, being part of the school choir and finding our who’s class I’d be in next year. I lived through school, I knew it didn’t offer all or any of those things but I’d still not have passed up the chance to be there.

So my answer to the question ‘what if they want to go to school?’ is always ‘then to school they shall go’. Never do I want to be resented for not letting them go there, for ‘making them different’, for preventing them from any experience, opportunity, hell, even any disappointment. If and when they reach an age where they can rationalise why they want to go and I truly believe it is more than a passing whim or wont then of course they shall go to school. This has always been about the children, not about me. They are Home Educated, I am not a Home Educator. This is their lives we are defining, not mine. The resource exists, if there is anything to be gained from it at all then it should be taken and grapsed with both hands.

Until now all of the ‘many children who have been home educated go on to attend school, most with very successful results’ have been anecdotal ones I have read about rather than known personally. But in the last year I can name and actually know various of the children I am talking about. Next week another child I know will be counted among that number. That does not unnerve me in the slightest - I believe in Home Education to such a degree that I think it gives children a head start wherever they go be it school, the workplace or adulthood generally. When my work as a facilitator here is done I am confident Monster and Teeny will go off and be the best they can. That might be in five years, it might be in ten or fifteen, but they will know when they are ready because if I’m teaching them anything at all, that is the most important lesson. 

Name three things:

That you had hanging on your tree 

1. stained glass window biscuits made with boiled sweets
2. candy canes - mint ones for Teeny and fruit ones for Monster
3. chocolate tree decorations

It wasn’t an entirely edible decorations tree but it was pretty close

That you’ve eaten / drunk lots of 

1. alcohol generally, but specifically fizzy wine and snowballs (I’m so classy and sophisticated! )
2. chocolate liqueurs - possibly my favourite part of the festive season. Not only did I have loads as presents, I also stock up myself when they go on sale and this year the staff room at work has been filled with them too.
3. Christmas cake. I made my own this year for the first time and it’s lovely.

That you didn’t do this year but hope to do next year

1. Go to a good carol concert with the children. We took them to the local church’s carol service but I know they’d adore a proper choir singing candlelit concert. And so would I.
2. Make more of our presents. We made a few last minute bits but I’ve been inspired by some great ideas other people have had so next year I’ll plan a bit more in advance and aim to make pretty much all our gifts for everyone but the children.
3. Go to a panto. We’ve been in previous years and all loved them. This year money was too tight but next year I’m determined we’ll go to one. Oh yes we will!

 Favourite presents

1. A painted mug from Monster & Teeny. We all have our own mugs at work and I needed to take one in to keep there so the children painted me one from a kit.
2. Lush bits from a secret santa on a forum I’m on.
3. I didn’t actually get a great deal more and easily got way more pleasure from watching Monster open his Wallace and Gromit playhouses, Teeny open her big box of make up and A open his Laurel & Hardy dvds so I’m going to say the gifts I gave them instead of listing one of my own.

That you’re glad you didn’t get for Christmas

1. Ill! Every year I dread feeling ill for Christmas. Last year A was poorly but this year we were all healthy for the whole festive period.
2. Clothes. I have many grim memories of getting clothes I hated for Christmas over the years. I don’t think anyone has ever given me clothing I would have chosen for myself and there’s nothing worse that opening something and hating it!
3. Books - normally my favourite gift but would feel a bit pointless now I’m working in a library and rarely read books a second time.

People to tag

Ali  at Where the days go

Lucy at Life

Dani & Allie at Green House by the Sea